WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has denied approval to three age verification companies that were seeking to implement a biometrics solution to meet Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requirements.
The four FTC commissioners voted unanimously to reject the application jointly submitted last June by Yoti, the Entertainment Software Rating Board and SuperAwesome.
The companies’ “Privacy-Protective Facial Age Estimation” system would “analyze the geometry of a user’s face to confirm the person is an adult and can access certain content,” tech law news site NextGov reported.
“The FTC confirmed that 354 comments raised concerns with the software’s data collection and storage capabilities, particularly in regards to generating deepfake content, along with other privacy violations.”
Yoti also submitted the same biometric model to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); that evaluation and report are forthcoming.
The FTC left open the possibility of revisiting the technology and the rejected application, stating that it expects that the NIST report “will materially assist the Commission, and the public, in better understanding age verification technologies.”
Evan Greer, of digital rights group Fight for the Future, called the rejection of the AV companies’ application “another great move from the FTC.”
“A world where you get your face scanned to access a website is not a safer world,” Greer posted on X.com. “There is no ‘privacy protective’ way to scan people’s faces in order to estimate their age.”
XBIZ has reached out to Yoti for comment.